Yeah I know an engineer at Imperial that fled for a lot of the same reasons. Said when they nationalized he went to a protest with a co worker that turned into a riot, and his co worker was shot and killed in front of him.
It would take billions of dollars to replace all the equipment they left to rust out, let alone what it takes to attract back professionals that fled the country for fear of death just because they were VP's, managers or engineers.
Add to that US sanctions on diluent (which is a major component of their export requirement) and Venezuela is pretty much boned.
If there was appetite for it, I would think expanding Canadian production and constructing pipelines would be easier, faster and less violent than fixing the mess in Venezuela, which would likely involve a coup of some kind.
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